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08:51
Monitoring Protein Adsorption with Solid-state Nanopores
Published on: December 2, 2011
Particle capture via discrete binding elements: systematic variations in binding energy for randomly distributed
Surachate Kalasin1, Surangkhana Martwiset, E Bryan Coughlin
1Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts, 120 Governor's Drive, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, United States.
Langmuir : the ACS Journal of Surfaces and Colloids
|October 22, 2010
Summary
Stronger surface "stickers" (adhesive functionalities) significantly increase particle adhesion, even when total adhesive energy per area is fixed. Discretized functionalities are more adhesive than uniformly distributed ones.
Area of Science:
- Surface science
- Adhesion science
- Colloid science
Background:
- Surface interactions govern adhesion between materials.
- Uniformly distributed adhesive forces are often modeled using mean-field approaches.
- Heterogeneous surfaces present complex adhesion behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how binding strength of surface-immobilized "stickers" affects adhesion between repulsive surfaces.
- To quantify the impact of redistributing adhesive functionality into larger clusters on adhesion probability.
- To explore the transition from non-adhesive to adhesive states by increasing surface heterogeneity.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing an electrostatic model system with negatively charged silica spheres and flats.
- Introducing nanoscale cationic patches on the silica flats to create local attractions.
- Analyzing particle capture curves and comparing experimental data with a simple adhesion model.
Main Results:
- Increasing sticker strength, while keeping average adhesive energy per area constant, enhances adhesion.
- Adhesion signatures characteristic of a renormalized random distribution were observed.
- Experimental results showed good quantitative agreement with a model assuming a fixed adhesion energy for capture.
Conclusions:
- Heterogeneous surface functionalities can dramatically increase adhesion, transitioning systems from non-adhesive to strongly adhesive.
- Discretized adhesive functionalities are more effective for adhesion than uniformly distributed ones.
- A simple formalism for predicting particle adhesion based on sticker strength and distribution was developed.
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